After
Scrounging for History (LJ)
Digging through History (LJ)
Delving in History (LJ)
Bringing Home History (LJ)
Singing down History (LJ)
Learning of History (LJ
Getting over History (LJ)
Making New History (LJ)
Part 7.5 of 7.5

Fae Apoc has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ

The Nightwalker led them through the ruins of the city, her tail swishing, her whole body leaned forward. “There’s a few,” she told them, “places that never got touched, places that are almost whole, even now. There’s a few that look whole, that are traps. And there’s gardens, still growing. My gardens, now.” She ducked, almost a bow, almost an apology. “Our gardens?”

“You called us correctly,” Dor replied. He was still angry, still distrusting her. Karida couldn’t blame her. “We are scroungers. We don’t plant gardens.”

“Then whose gardens will they be? If we go… you could stay here, you three and the girl, and teach me. You could stay here, and I could feed you. Show you everything I know of this place.”

She turned to look at them, a hungry look on her face, a smile that told Karida that something was seriously wrong. “And if the land betrays you, then, I have not betrayed nor hurt you, have I?”

That was all the warning they had. Karida felt the place the road below their feet would collapse as the witch said that, felt it and threw Amalie out of danger, into Dor so they both fell clear, even as under her the ground collapsed dropping her into a sinkhole, dropping her down, down, down. She twisted, trying to find up from down, trying to land on her feet, and caught her head on something hard and metal.

She lost consciousness still falling, and never felt the impact.

~fin~

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After
Scrounging for History (LJ)
Digging through History (LJ)
Delving in History (LJ)
Bringing Home History (LJ)
Singing down History (LJ)
Learning of History (LJ
Getting over History (LJ)

Fae Apoc has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ

“That’s a harsh chance to ask us to take.”

Karida stared down into the pit at the witch, Amalie, Fiery, and Dor hovering nearby, Amalie’s song seeming to hang in the air. The witch stared back up at them, the hope leaving her face.

“So leave me here. Leave me in this pit,” she spat bitterly. “Leave me like everyone else has.”

“Talk like that and I will,” Karida snapped. She didn’t want to, though… but her company’s safety was at stake. “What do you know of what you are?”

“Freak. Monster.” She sat down hard on a pipe, her tail lashing. “I know I can purify water, purify food. I know this happened when I turned seventeen. And I know I don’t get older.”

“Have you ever made someone a promise?”

The witch thought about that one for a moment. “No. Yes. Yes, that I would keep their water clean if they didn’t attack me.” She hissed softly. “And then… then I could not stop. I couldn’t stop helping them, even when they took everything from me. Not until that kid threw a rock at me. I… I see.”

“You’re smart, good. Promise that you mean no harm to us or our company, that you will not betray us, and we will take you with us, and teach you.”

“That’s a lot to ask.”

“This is my family we’re talking about. And you’ve already attacked us once.”

The woman’s tail twitched, and she looked down at her fingers, at a broken claw, at her ragged clothing. “How did you get to learn what you were, to use it? How come you have clean clothes and family, when I have nothing?”

“Just lucky, I guess,” Dor answered, the spite out of his voice. “But you have a lot of life ahead of you. You can have all that, too.”

“Guys,” Amalie interrupted, “we still haven’t found anything to bring back to the company. Not enough, at least. We need to move on…” She hummed quietly. “We need to find the feast/to twist ‘way from the beast/to bring to large and least/to give to each, to each.”

The witch looked up at them. “I can help with that,” she said, with the faintest hint of a smile. “I can help you bring something to your company. If you let me out. And I can help you avoid the real monsters. The beast. I know this city. I’ve been living here for… for a long time.”

“Swear it,” Dor said sharply. “Swear that you mean us no harm.”

The witch sighed. “I, once-called-Sana, swear that I will do no harm to you four, to your company, to your family, unless you first harm me. I swear I will not betray you, if you let me out of this pit.”

“Good enough?” Dor asked.

Amalie frowned, humming. “I… Family and kin/under the skin/buyer beware/move forth with care?”

“Tricky,” Karida sighed. “We may have to try something else, but for now we can simply be careful. Once-called-Sana, what do we call you now?”

“They call me witch,” the woman answered, as Dor made stairs down to her. “I call myself Nightwalker.”

Next: Trusting in History (LJ)

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After
Scrounging for History (LJ)
Digging through History (LJ)
Delving in History (LJ)
Bringing Home History (LJ)
Singing down History (LJ)
Learning of History (LJ

Part 6 of 7
Fae Apoc has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ

The witch at the bottom of the pit, the monster-thing that was maybe not a monster at all, looked up at them uncertainly.

“Why would you care?” she repeated. “Why would anyone care?”

“Why care?” Fiery echoed, her bound hands going to smooth her own ragged hair uncertainly. “Families don’t.”

The witch nodded in agreement. “What she said. The people who knew me threw me out. The people who knew that one threw her out. Why would your people be any different?”

Karida sat down on the edge of the pit and dropped her Mask. Her extra-large feet and long, thick tail dangled over the edge. “We just fought you with Workings and magic. What made you think we weren’t the same as you?”

The woman blinked at her, the question obviously taking her completely by surprise. “How… What…?”

“How?” Fiery repeated. “HOW?” she demanded, urgently.

“We will teach you,” Amalie soothed the girl. “We will…” She hummed quietly, and then continued, “bring you, teach you, wash you, show you, sing you, reach you, wash you know you. Teach you, reach you, show you, know you; bring you, sing you, Bring you home too.”

The girl nodded uncertainly; Karida couldn’t blame her. That had been one of Amalie’s sillier ditties.

Down below her feet, the witch keened. “And me?” she groaned. “Would you leave me here, ignorant?”

“You know something,” Karida pointed out. “You could help Fiery’s people.”

“Not like you do. Not like,” she gestured at the stairs. “That sort of thing.”

“So suddenly scrounger trash has something you want?” Dor was, to put it mildly, cranky. Karida couldn’t really bring herself to blame him. “After you attacked us?”

“Humans have been using and hunting me for decades. They’ll do the same to your little captive there. It’s what they do, when their blood turns sour.”

“But you knew we weren’t from your village, if you knew we were ‘trash scroungers,” Dor grumbled.

“And? You with your girl there in ropes, do you think others of your kind haven’t done the same? Slavers, people-takers, food-stealers all of you. I don’t want to be stolen.”

“But you want to be rescued and taught?” Karida asked, caught up in the narrative.

“I don’t want to be left in a pit! If you’ll teach her, why not teach me, too?”

Amalie was frowning now, humming her tune slowly, as if she couldn’t quite get it to go properly. “Viper in the nest,” she murmured, “kitten at the breast, Wildfire in the hearth, candle burning bright thenceforth.”

Karida took that all in. “So she’ll either be fiercely loyal or betray us utterly.” She looked down at the witch. “That is a harsh chance to ask us to take, with our whole company at stake.”

Next: Making New History (LJ)

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After
Scrounging for History (LJ)
Digging through History (LJ)
Delving in History (LJ) and
Bringing Home History (LJ)
Singing down History (LJ)

Part 5 of ~7.5
Fae Apoc has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ

Karida let out a whoop as the creature they were fighting landed in a puff of dirt and dust, and then a quiet whimper as the sight of blood and, worse, bone caught her eye. “Shit,” she moaned, and stepped back. She didn’t want to faint into the pit. Dropping yourself on your enemy was a poor tactic.

“Got you,” Amalie murmured. “Here we go. Jasfe tlactl Karida,” she murmured, and sang the rest, “jasfe tlacatl Karida-my-kin, jafse tlacatl βραχίων.”

“Jasfe,” their captive murmured, and the air rang. “Jasfe tlactl?”

“That’s it,” Amalie hummed happily. “There you go, Karida, good as new. And seems our new sister is a healer.”

“Wonderful.” She flexed the healed arm and muttered a quick repair on the sleeve, as well; she wasn’t that good at those Words, but good enough to not have the cloth flapping around. “So we have something in the pit, do we? Dor?”

“I’m working on it. There’s some pretty impressive invisibility Workings going on. I didn’t know monsters could work.”

“Some monsters snarl/ and some monsters hiss,” Amalie hummed, “Some monsters know/the way the world is.”

“That’s one of Mom’s,” Dor complained, and then, with an oof, sat down on the edge of the pit. “Come look.”

“Coming.” The four of them looked over the edge of the pit together, at the image Dor was slowly forcing into existence. Foot-long claws. Tusks, like some sort of goblin in the old stories. A long tail like a dragon, lashing back and forth angrily. Hooves like a goat.

Fiery was the first to speak. “Witch,” she grunted. “Witch-woam.”

“Witch,” Amalie hummed, getting the feel of the song. “Tell me again, Fiery-sister?”

“Witch-woam,” the girl repeated. “Sundown.”

“Sundown,” Amalie repeated. “There we go. The witch, they said, lived in the dusk/ the witch they need but cannot trust./The witch who brought their water clear/ the witch who kept their lives so dear.”

“Nasty people,” Karida swore. The creature in the pit was, fangs and tail and hooves aside, a woman. A witch, perhaps, an Ellehemaei. But was she monster or foe? “They traded services with her?”

“That’s the tune that’s singing to me,” Amalie confirmed. “Sundown, you better beware/If I find you’ve been sneaking ’round my back stair… Mmm. I see.”

In the pit, the witch hissed and snarled.

“Some monsters hiss?” Dor offered. “If she was doing Workings for them, she can’t be feral.”

“And probably isn’t a monster.” Karida looked down into the pit. “If you don’t fight us, we won’t fight you. We aren’t looking for a war.”

“Nasty humans,” the witch-creature spat. “Let me out.”

“Human?” Dor laughed. “No more than you are.” He muttered the beginnings of a working, shaping stairs into the pit. “Did they kick you out, the way they kicked Fiery out?”

“What do you care, scrounger trash, trash-scrounger?”

He stopped the Working, stairs stepping down but ending above the woman’s reach. “If you don’t care, then I don’t either,” he answered tightly. “But it seems the sort of thing that our company might take note of… scrounger trash or no.”

Next:
Getting Over History (LJ)

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After
Scrounging for History (LJ)
Digging through History (LJ)
Delving in History (LJ) and
Bringing Home History (LJ)

Part 4 of ~7.5
Fae Apoc has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ

The rope seemed rather superfluous, but Karida didn’t want to risk their new… sister… wandering off, so she finished the ritual, giving the girl a little more water and then binding her wrists in front of her, leaving the end of the rope as a leash.

Fiery didn’t even fight the rope, looking at it with an expression Karida thought might be resignation. “Show us what you know of this place?” she asked, to take their minds off of that.

The girl nodded, and looked around for a moment, orienting herself, maybe. Or buying time. Amalie hummed softly, getting the thread of the song back. “This changes the tune. It adds…” she hummed for a moment more, and then sang a quick scale of nonsense sounds. “Ah. A minor note.”

“Sounds like there ought to be a thudding drumbeat,” Dor commented. “Maybe just the walking? Ba-bum, ba-bum.”

“Ba-bum,” Fiery smiled, thudding a beat on her thighs, da-da-da-DUM.

Let them sing the trip. Someone had to actually MAKE the trip for the song to finish. Smiling in exasperation, Karida started walking again.

The buildings nearby were in bad shape, fallen in, collapsed. She went past three without entering, because her sense told her they were death traps, empty of anything useful and full of rotting boards.

Behind her, her little party followed, humming and singing as if they were on parade, Amalia holding Fiery’s lead. They turned down what had to be a road, between the wrecks of two homes, and then down another road, while the music evolved and trailed behind them.

The song, as far as Karida could tell, had taken a detour into their captive’s life, or at least what little she was capable of telling them so far.

“‘Monster,’ they said, who had eyes but no sight,
“‘Monster!’ They threw their kin to the night.
“‘Monster,’ no beast, just a girl with a gift,
“‘Monster,’ their child, set loose and adrift.”

“Monster,” Karida snapped, as her sense told her something was coming, something that had gotten nearly up on her without her knowing. Too big to be a human, too silent to be a normal creature.

“Kar…” Amalie complained, but Karida didn’t have time for that.

“‘Ware danger,” she repeated, reaching out her sense. The damn thing was invisible, wasn’t it, and there it was, almost on top of them and she could smell its breath, like carrion rotting. “There’s a monster.” She swung with her stick and connected, landing on something tender, from the sounds of things. “Dor!”

“On it.” Dor muttered and then yelled, pressing his hands and his power towards the monster, guided by Karida’s swings and the solid thunking noises they made. Something caught her arm, raking a long cut through her sleeve and into her skin, burning and going numb all at once.

She shifted her grip to her other hand, cursing softly, and kept swinging. Any moment now…

“And thud,” Amalie sang with joy, and the ground under the monster opened up in a pit.

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After
Scrounging for History (LJ)
Digging through History (LJ)
Delving in History (LJ)

Part 3 of ~7.5
Fae Apoc has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ

At least they knew what to do. Karida nodded to Dor, who began plundering the area quickly.

“My home,” the girl hissed. “Go ‘way.”

“No, it’s not,” Karida answered gently. “There’s not even a blanket. You may have been scrounging here, same as us, but you don’t live here.”

“My home,” she repeated stubbornly. Karida reached out again, but she could find nothing like a nest. Even the most feral of humans made nests.

“No,” she shook her head, and carefully took the girl’s wrists. They were thin and bony, with a bit of firm muscle under the skin. “Do you have a tribe? A village, a town, a family, a people?” She stopped, because with every word, the girl flinched.

“No,” she whimpered. “Did…”

“Aah.” A sole survivor, perhaps, a runaway? Karida lead her gently back into the basement, and from there up the stairs. “Where were your people?”

The girl’s words seemed to be coming more smoothly as she kept at it. “To south,” she gestured.

“In the towers?” Those were giant buildings. They could house a whole colony in one of those, and never need to split up again.

“No, no. No!” She almost shouted the last, pulling at Karida’s grip on her wrists. “No.” Her shoulders slumped. “Further.”

“Not the towers. Okay.” Those would need investigating, probably by the whole company. “Why… oh.”

The girl folded in on herself at they reached the sunlight, but nothing could hide the finely-pointed ears sticking out of her hair, or the faintly golden shimmer of her skin. “They threw you out?” she guessed.

“Guh,” the girl sobbed, pulling her knees to her chin. How long has she been on her own? Well, she wasn’t any longer. Dor had followed them out of the hole; he handed her a length of rope now, and a small bit of bread, and their canteen.

Karida knelt down. “It’s all right. What’s your name?”

“Fiery,” she managed, still flinching down as small as she could get.

“Okay, Fiery. You know this area pretty well?”

“Little.” She was talking into her knees, but it wasn’t the first time Karida had interpreted, and, behind them, Amalie was humming quietly, helping.

“Then here.” She pressed canteen and bread into the girl’s hands. “Eat. Drink. We will feed you and give you water. We will protect you.” And clean her up. “And you will guide us around this place.”

Fiery nodded, and nibbled at the food cautiously, washing it down with long gulps of water. “I can,” she agreed, her mouth full. “Protect?” Her pointed ears perked up at that.

“Protect you,” Dor agreed. He sat down to the other side of the girl, one hand on her shoulders. “Like you were our own.”

“And teach you,” Amalie offered, working it into her tune. “Like a little sister.”

“Like a sister,” Karida agreed. It would remain to see how many words the girl could learn, but that one, it was clear she knew.

“Sister.” She ducked her head to hide a smile. “Yes.”

Continued in Singing down History (LJ)

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